The online marketing arena is murky with quick tips and strategies to optimize your site for the best free search engine rankings. Without participating in “sponsor” advertising or PPC (Pay Per Click) programs, it is a fact that search engine optimization can enhance your “natural” or “organic” listings. But within reason and only when done within the rules.

Unfortunately, there are a plethora of unethical search engine marketers that do not hesitate to take your money by making impossible promises based on little to no actual experience in doing so even for their own sites. If you’ve read my previous article The Ten Commandments of Search Engines, you’ll then have a good grasp of what is involved.

When approached either by spam or on the phone with the following pitches, know them to be untrue or misleading at best! Companies that offer you these “solutions” do not really know what they are doing. Well, that is a subjective statement, they either think they know what they are doing, or know for a fact they are bending the rules in an effort to bypass standard practices just to make a buck. One thing is clear, they are banking on your lack of knowledge to get into your pocket book!

1. Change/Update your Meta Keyword Tags: If only it were that easy! I have seen those who have been conned into paying high fees simply to have some designer update their Meta Keyword tags. List whatever you want within that tag and you’ll get found when searched for. Baloney! The fact is the majority of search engines completely ignore or put little to no value on the Meta Keyword tag.
2. Creating Doorway Pages or Mini Sites: Yikes! This is considered spamming the search engines and can get your site penalized. Any page that is not a linked to part of your site and is created with duplicate content for the sole purpose of manipulating search engine listings is a disaster waiting to happen. The same site or info on a different domain name to garner duplicate listings is simply spamming the search engines and they know this so they ignore those additional pages. Search engines have rules against this type of practice and don’t take kindly to folks who use these tactics. Anyone offering you this solution is surely not playing by the rules or worthy of your hard earned dollars.
3. Guaranteeing Positions: Experienced and ethical marketers can and should certainly show you how they approach the process and what results have been achieved in the past. However, if they are true pros running an legitimate shop, they will never promise or guarantee future results - either is position or for length of time. Those who make these promises are mostly likely not playing by the rules and spamming the search engines with a multitude of doorway pages or redirected cloak pages - both of which are big no-nos!

None of us have any idea what search engine algorithms will be tomorrow let alone a week or a month from now. Guaranteed positions can only be promised by participating in Pay Per Click programs and purchasing your positions. In particular for new sites, plan on 7-8 months before you see the fruit of your labor for organic listings on Google.

4. Instant Link Popularity & Results: Anyone who has been online even for a short amount of time has found out that the word instant does not apply to most things online. If the word “instant” is used, particularly when it comes to a link program, you know the company making the offer is using under the table trickery to temporarily boost your listings. They do this by using expired domains or adding you to link farms on their servers that link all their clients together. The downside is eventually this catches up with your site and has the opposite effect you desire.

Link programs are only successful when done properly: see my article The Reality of Linking. A key factor in any successful link directory creation is that all the sites have something in common in topic or site focus that benefits the site visitors to each site. This takes time and consistency to build (just like anything that produces results online). When it comes to links, a site owner’s search engine ranking desires need to take a back seat to offering site visitors quality resources.

5. Your Site Is Just Fine the Way It Is: I’ve seen this train of thought from both site owners whose ego is invested because they created their own site (or don’t want to pay to have it created properly) and from unethical marketers willing to take advantage of that train of thought to line their pockets. Don’t believe that pitch for a moment!

I have yet to run into a site when contacted for advice that I cannot optimize for better organic listings. Heck, I know I can find issues with my own sites where I could optimize further if I so desired. If optimization was not considered during the development stage and the copy writing stage of your site - you having catching up to do.

This includes having intuitive navigation that is not only consistent throughout your site for your site visitors, but ensuring your navigation is “crawler friendly” so you have the best chance for your entire site to get indexed. This requires planning way in advance of any bit of code or copy being created.

For those who have read some of my other Web Marketing articles, you’ll find the same reoccurring theme. There are no quick fixes or short cuts. Your site is a business and it has to be given the same amount of dedication and planning that any off-line business venture would require. And, online is nothing if it isn’t about marketing! You have to spend your time and invest your budget in the appropriate areas to make things happen - or they won’t. All you’ll accomplish is throwing good money after bad all in an effort to save time or money.

This means following the rules and implementing proven strategies that are the core of all successful Web sites. There are far too many companies out there that willing take advantage of the hungry uniformed site owners with the desire for “quick, cheap and easy” - know you are now armed with the facts. One of the most popular acronyms used online in the early days, applies here: TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!

Avoid working with anyone who portrays any of the above mistruths as your path to better rankings. Let them know you know better and then spend your time and money to work on growing a site that is the best it can be about your products or services. Have a plan and do things the right way and the traffic will come.

“In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.”
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English Author, Lexicographer

With all the hype in regard to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) one could come to the assumption that all you have to do is optimize your pages and Shazam! your site is in the Top 10! I think that comes from a desire for that to be true. Many feeling that by just optimizing their site and wishing on their lucky search engine rabbit foot rankings will just happen. That’s so 1990’s!

Now fast forward to the present and optimizing is one of the most talked about silver bullets. However, I am seeing that critical considerations are being ignored before “optimizing.” Here are just a few:

• Do you having a quality, consistent design to optimize?
• Did you investigate if you are entering an overly saturated market?
• Is your pricing competitive?
• Do you have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?
• Is your shipping and handling overpriced?
• Do you have a strategy, methodology or business plan?

Need I go on? Without the above, optimizing is a waste of time and the site owner’s money. Regardless of what Spam or the Black Hat SEOs want everyone to believe, optimizing is futile without having your ducks in a row on the important issues first.

For those who haven’t heard the term “Black Hat”, Black Hat SEOs are the SEOs who will say or do anything to get into the customer’s pocket book with claims of quick and unbelievable results. They cater to what they know many Web site owners want to believe; that search engine rankings are easy and just a matter of “optimizing.” Many times using what the site owner doesn’t know to make claims of Top 10 rankings and what the search engines don’t condone to accomplish even minor results.

Then there are White Hat SEOs. These are the folks that realize optimization is an important part of getting rankings–but not the end-all-be-all. Not the silver bullet, not the magic pill, not the miracle cure to getting solid rankings for a poorly conceived Web site. Just a piece of the puzzle that includes well written optimized content catering to site visitors first, then search engines while making sure all the other important variables are also in place.

Yes, optimizing your content is a smart thing to do. But you can’t optimize your site to the point where the text is no longer readable to human beings and expect to get orders, contacts or conversions. You can optimize your site to death, however, if you have a product that is not in demand, or at the wrong price on a poorly designed site–you’ve just optimized a site that will not produce regardless of its rankings.

Optimization is only part of having a comprehensive marketing program–not the Holy Grail! You need to look at your overall site marketing strategy, which should include all the tools available to you in the year 2007 to market your interactive site for best network exposure. From Blogs to autoresponder campaigns, to content that grows like a corn stalk; without these added to your program, you can optimize until the cows come home but the fat lady will never sing.

Don’t optimize before you strategize!